Expected Value
2009
The success of a political system to me is measured by the freedom given to those struggling to create structures of high expected value.
What I was toying with, was the idea of conditioned certainty equivalents. What is the expected value of Obama's vision with Nobel?
I'm rethinking my opposition to Obama's Nobel. It's clear why he *shouldn't* win it. But 'expected value' is growing on me.
If you want me to 'explain' the difference between ex-ante and ex-post expected value, just say 'no harm, no foul' after putting me at risk.
2010
I'm thrown by my president saying "We want our money back". Uh. No. It's the VAST expected value of involuntary risk assumed (via clawback).
2016
This isn't about maximum likelihood. Assuming even a tiny probability you'd still be alarmed ex ante. Risk mgmt. is about expected value. https://t.co/PdeKVvEkRU
2018
I rarely talk Trump. I never know when heās actually crazy or crazy like a fox. Iāve called him an existential risk. I thought that was clear enough. Heās an existential risk who, ex-post, might do some good, but at unacceptably high ex-ante risk.
I canāt believe weāre here.
@DavidDeutschOxf @SamHarrisOrg Yes. Exactly. It was likely a slower version of existential risk by inaction.
The thing that disturbs me most is that neither Trump version nor the more sober Clinton/Bush/Obama type strategy are likely to be anywhere near the efficient frontier of possible approaches.
@ScottAdamsSays Hey Scott. Ok. Walk me through it? Who are Trumpās allies w/ whom weāve been carefully rehearsing & co-strategizing in case this goes hot? Whatās the plan for a simultaneous China trade war, N Korea deterioration, attacking our own IC, & political infighting around Russian ties?
@ScottAdamsSays Iām open to drunken boxing, or crazy-like-a-fox. I get the Vincent āThe Chinā Gigante āwalk around G. Village in your bathrobe routineā to avoid being easy prey. But wouldnāt he be very focused on having great relations w/ our Intelligence Community & Allies to be hyper credible?
@ScottAdamsSays Ok. Iām a civilian with zero experience in battle. I thought a credible threat requires a lot of advanced planning and not fighting on a lot of distracting fronts all at once. Is the idea that everything will quiet down and all will fall in line when things get real? #confused
@ScottAdamsSays Just 2%. Okay at least thatās at least arguably de minimis. From where does that estimate come? How are you getting there?
@ScottAdamsSays We do? Okay. What does that look like? Especially in the opportunistic scenario where everyone scrambled to make hay while the US is distracted. Is it just lightening fast? Does it stay conventional? Civilian casualty estimates? Paint me your picture. #givemeyourconfidence
@ScottAdamsSays Post WMD? Post Vietnam? Post Trump? Post Church/Pike. I dunno. Maybe. But Scott. I gotta be honest. You seem to be confusing āpeople donāt get that this could work outā with āthis is so cool, itās gonna work fineā and I donāt know where you get the extra juice to make that leap.
@DavidDeutschOxf @SamHarrisOrg I like standing up to backwards human rights violating nuclear obsessed theocracy. I just wish it were part of a plan. I never underestimate Persians. They always seem to me some of the shrewdest players around. But thanks David.
@ScottAdamsSays I see the next level psychological manipulation or persuasion as you do. Thatās not where we are missing.
Trump is āshort volatilityā here. So āgenerallyā is irrelevant. Itās about expected value. How do you get from generally positive to positive expected value? Help me out SA?
@BowDownB4Trump @DavidDeutschOxf @SamHarrisOrg Thatās why I said theocracy....
@ScottAdamsSays Itās the standard Russian Roulette problem with many chambers and one bullet. If every spin is worth $50K it generally works out, albeit with negative expected value.
@ScottAdamsSays So this surprises me Scott. I imagined you must be thinking something like Trump figured out how to get the Theocrats to crumble from within by bringing a tweet to a knife fight...and winning. But now youāre just pointing out that we are better armed for a real fight. Is that it?
2020
The sky high cost of fragility built into Just-In-Time inventory and trans-national supply chains is something too infrequently discussed.
Unfortunately, our luck has been outstanding for a very very long time masked by debt. I suppose this maybe my disagreement with @sapinker.
We need small outbreaks of bad luck now. Not so much as to cause disasters but sufficient to akwaken us to the expected value of fragile solutions. Most everything has in a weird way gotten better. It is the cost in increased risk/potential energy that makes me disagree w Pinker.
@wolfejosh @sapinker We havenāt explored the landscape much in 75 years. No one young remembers the extent of the game.
Many proudly āData drivenā people seem invariably confused by the meaning of data. Particularly ārunsā, skewness, kurtosis, outliers, expected return vs expected value.
And the operative word seems to be āproudlyā. It seems to have to do with a barely hidden contempt for theory.
2022
Expected Value isnāt really your thing?
āPublic should not worry: Full-Scale Nuclear War still unlikely say experts.ā
@DeltaNado Uhā¦thanks?Ā ;-)
I was listening to NPR just the other day. It was phrased in something like the following way as I remember it: āGood news for parents, the long wait for vaccines for their young children is finally over.ā
Completely dissing parents with concerns about vaccinating low risk kids.
The way I hear it: we assume the argument that all good parents agree:
āCOVID vaccines = Clear Pure Good. Slam dunk. Costless & Riskless. No Brainer. Science.ā
āVaccine concerns = Right Wing / AltRight, anti-science mental illness. Fox Newsesque. MAGA Adjacent. Anti-American.ā
I have no understanding of how so many non-technical people who know nothing special about immunology KNOW absolutely that this is a good long term tradeoff given how healthy young children have such low COVID fatality rates. How are we SO confident of the long term risks/costs??
I would feel very differently if we had decades of experience with these types of vaccines.
Or if we were aggressively pursuing the origin of this virus.
Or if vaccine manufacturers were open to liability lawsuits.
Or if critics had grant guarantees Fauci couldnāt touch.
Etc.
As a parent? Iām lost. I donāt hear a conversation. Iām used to the austere language of DALYs / QALYs, tradeoffs, expected value, disease burden, Iatrogenics, etc. Iām used to the language of adaptive landscapes / viral evolution.
But this style thinking is *unknown* in science.
This is like your uncle telling you āYou need to put your entire retirement account 100% in crypto. Right now. Iāll tell you which ones are hot. We are wasting time. Iāll show you. Iāll do it right now. Whatās your password for your retirement account? Iāve got a browser openā¦ā
Look. In this analogy, maybe your uncle is right. I donāt know. He *has* made good calls before. But heās also made bad calls before. And this isnāt the way we typically act when we really know what weāre doing.
So I donāt know. This feels like pressure on loving parents.
To sum it all up: the advice to vaccinate with really new types of pharmaceuticals should feel like it comes from scientists who are *100%* on their game as scientists.
Instead it feels like a call center overseas trying to pressure your widowed great aunt to buy gift cards.š
Oh no.
Hopefully this is wrong somehow.
If itās is not wrong, then it becomes very important to stop playing according to any old script. Thereās no pretending it is still possible to play according to the script. This is not pre-1945 Europe.
I do not understand what weāre all doing.
@AnnaGBusse May you continue to be right about this Anna. Iām speaking somewhat obliquely, but I do not like that any bold field commander this close to Poland could choose to upset this delicate equation with a mere targeting error. This is way too close to Polish land. As you knowā¦
@AnnaGBusse Nor do I discount the need not to roll over in the face of Putin and his army.
I just donāt sense from anyoneās rhetoric that we realize where we are. We are all engaged in magical thinking about why things are some distance away from the unthinkable.
Both you and me includedā¦
@AnnaGBusse Anyway, Iād rather hear your thoughts on how to stay away from the abyss. If you think Iām wrong about how close we have been to the brink, Iād love you to change my mind. Thx.
@AnnaGBusse Okay. Assuming that I understand (which I may not), here is why Iām baffled. You have described a game with two players: NATO (N) and Putin (P). Both players may potentially be āatrociousā, but they are logical & self-interested: both N&P see annihilation in direct confrontation.
@AnnaGBusse One can, in this description, work backwards. To avoid losing, both sides agree that they will exhaust all moves before triggering any obligate escalation to invocation of Article 5. Ergo, they both agree that they must always leave the other a way out despite their antagonism.
@AnnaGBusse Okay. Here goes: I donāt see this world.
I think it is a first order description at best. When you are this close to NATO territory, every field commander becomes a relevant decision maker. I think I calculated there was fighting 8 hypersonic seconds away from Poland. Wrong?
@AnnaGBusse Then you have the skill level of the players. Biden is 79 with a 1/20 chance of dying in any year with Kamala Harris on deck. He has said that P cannot remain in power and described that N has a āsacred obligationā to protect N (which now includes Poland since 1999).
@AnnaGBusse Then, as if that wasnāt explicit enough, he took away more discretion by clarifying this meant WWIIi. Literally. Which Zelensky (Z) followed with requests for a no-fly zone at one point and āŠæŃŠµŠ²ŠµŠ½ŃŠøŠ²Š½ŃŠµ ŃŠ“Š°ŃŃā (preventative strikes) at another.
Something like that? Ballpark?
@AnnaGBusse To which I cry: Bullshit. Iām not supposed to say Z has been a loose cannon because he has been wronged by P. But Z IS a loose cannon. Itās part of what has made him charismatic & effective.
Even if I grant you a 3-4 player game with N,P and Z, there isnāt enough skill to play.
@AnnaGBusse This isnāt chess. These are battlefields with weather & alcohol & fatigue etc.. There are many players running around miscalculating. The 1st order description is just not good enough to be this close to the rubicon. That map of the conflict is NOT the territory of an actual war.
@AnnaGBusse I even think we agree. Your language is careful:
āto meā
āmost likelyā
āP would/might doā
Take them out? It reads: āThe most Russians will do is use a dirty bomb in a cityā and I know you would never say that. I think we agree to your 1st order description AND its inadequacy https://t.co/0kJrBFyO1O
@AnnaGBusse My argument is this: the players arenāt skilled enough to be talking through battle. There are too many actual decision makers, way too close to Poland. Z has been a very effective loose cannon. P has endgame issues from a conventional loss & has non conventional options. Etc.
@AnnaGBusse I think this has been a lot more dangerous than anyone is reflecting. And the entire world is in denial about this. We have given up on being rational. We just kind of hope things will work out as if all that can happen is 20th Cent conventional war w a few 21st century upgrades.
@Not_Gladwin @AnnaGBusse I dunno. There is also the matter of the suspicious coordinates of the impact.
Iām not a battlefield expert. I never served either. Etc.
I know military geeks but am not competent to say what the hell happened or who is lying. Just being honest. Sorry.
@AnnaGBusse And with that āLike any war.ā we see our divide starkly.
To me it is clear that every conventional war involving the thermonuclear powers, US and/or PRC and/or Russia etc, is like no war ever fought before 1952. Even if we fight 100 which do not move into new territory.
@AnnaGBusse Let me end with the words of Edward Treller reflecting on his child with Stan Ulam of Luvov:
āIf we have a slim chance of survival [now], it lies in the possibility to get rid of wars.ā
I think you believe it is business as usual which carries risk. I believe that time is past.
@AnnaGBusse Nice chatting with you Anna. As always. Hope your point continues to hold.
@AnnaGBusse This is Europe. In Vietnam I was under 10. This is quite different. And yes I worry. As you know, I consider Europe to be historically the most dangerous place in the world. The Disneyland of the post 1945 era doesnāt change that. Particularly in central and Eastern Europe.
@sjcorley @AnnaGBusse I have the same sense
@AnnaGBusse Uh. History? High density of reasonably wealthy uncomfortably similar rivalrous advanced societies? Cultural/Ethnic Connections to both US and Russia? Rapid NATO expansion?
Not sure what we are discussing here. Just take Belgrade alone:
@AnnaGBusse I find the Berlin Holocaust memorial to be an extraordinarily visceral physical exploration by way of metaphor that you can wander into madness barely noticing what is happening. Europe excels at this. And Western Europe has seemed very safe for many years.
@AnnaGBusse Weāre talking on different planes Anna. Youāre talking about rational incentives, individual conflicts & maximum likelihood. I am talking about expected value. My point about Belgrade:
ā[T]he city was battled over in 115 wars and razed to the ground 44 times.ā
- RussianRoulette
@AnnaGBusse This strategy of rational incentives among skilled players with non-conventional weapons, well aware of game theoretic traps is coming to an end. Proliferation alone will extend catastrophic weaponry to players all up and down the skill spectrum. We canāt keep playing like this.
@AnnaGBusse Again, we superficially agree. I donāt think weād have had 75+ years of this kind of peace under the old pre-nuclear rules. The expected value of conflict is unbelievably WORSE not better. Same point: you appear to be focused on maximally likely outcomes vs my expected value.
@AnnaGBusse The period of 1945-today has been fairly quiet, free and prosperous in (western) Europe. And nuclear weapons have been responsible for some measure of that. Which is disguising what has happened. The confusion of S Pinker āEverything is Better.ā
@AnnaGBusse Sorry. Do you not see a difference? Honest question.
@AnnaGBusse Didnāt see a response. So Iāll start filling in. The has been post Poland (1999?), Latvia (2004?) etc. coming into NATO. Itās extraordinarily close to the Border, particularly around Lviv. Russia isnāt using a proxy army. The level of weaponry used. Etc This is a higher madness.
@AnnaGBusse Anna, I donāt get the conversation. Maybe the idea is that youāre a political scientist & Iām focused on physics.
Our non conventional weaponry is post business as usual IR and PolySci. We are supposed to sense that everything is different post 1952-3. This wonāt work for long.
@AnnaGBusse Agreed. I think I better understand your perspective and I donāt disagree with your claims much. I just donāt think there is a long term future if that is the reality we accept. Most of the time we WILL be fine. Mostly nothing will go wrong. We can at least agree on that. š
2023
@stefihane Meaning: āThe ex ante negative expected value of this strategy will not be changed ex post by victory.ā
2024
Wow. This is not even in the right zip code.
A āTrump Voterā is not a Trump enthusiast. Many Trump voters despise Trump.
A Trump voter is someone who has said: āthe expected value of a Trump Presidency minus the expected value of a Kamala presidency is positive.ā
I am trying to figure this out myself. For example, suppose one thinks every terrible thing about Donald Trump, including that he is irresponsible enough to risk getting us into nuclear war. Only, she also thinks he is *less* likely to do so than Kamala Harris who covered up and continues to cover up a Commander in Chief with dementia during a half proxy war involving our main thermonuclear rival, and who herself seems installed by a primary-avoidance coup, as well as clueless and air headed.
Why does that voter need not to be demeaned? Maybe that person is actually seeing something Harris voters have totally missed.
Maybe that voter had a child whose school encouraged cutting off that kids breasts or genitals during teen years which are temporarily awkward for almost everyone. Maybe that person had a violent recidivist criminal or illegal alien rape or kill their niece while a prosecutor or border patrol did little to aggressively protect the innocent because of a progressive agenda.
Save your pity for the poor Trump voter. He or she isnāt necessarily below your or my level of understanding.
I donāt think I can vote Trump. But I donāt think I can vote for Kamala Harris either.
The Democratic Party, is out of its mind. We arenāt the party of the educated because we are plausibly the smarter party anymore. The educated professionals inside institutional employers simply became an interest group to be slopped at the trough. Just like hedge fund managers and unions.
We arenāt Anti-war. We arenāt Pro-democracy. We arenāt for a level playing field. We arenāt pro-family. We arenāt for Free Speech and against mind control.
We arenāt simply the good guys these days. Iām sorry to be the one to break it to you.
@Nero1131171 š